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Friday, May 9, 2014

7QT: Facelift!

~1~

Check out the blog facelift I just did this morning. I've been thinking about doing some sprucing up for a while and maybe it was the hormones or the sweet little one who woke up with bad dreams twice last night, but this morning I. Just. Did it. What do you think? Please don't tell me that you hate it or that you loved it the other way because I didn't save anything and I really don't want to start crying.

~2~

New and improved blog facelift even comes with a picture of my face! Over there on the sidebar. It's the one that Shortcake edited for me that makes me look 20 years younger. I don't color my hair but I don't mind filters that do it for me. And I MADE SOCIAL MEDIA BUTTONS!!! All by myself... with the help of a couple of blog posts and a YouTube video. I've been obsessed with adding them to my blog for a while and then when I finally did, I realized… I don't use social media that much. I mean, I have a FB page for the blog and I use Instagram privately; I think I've used my Twitter account maybe 20 times and I don't even remember my Pinterest password anymore. But never mind… look at the pretty buttons!!!

~3~

Sunshine and BigBoy were the last to succumb to the bug. They've been mildly miserable but entertaining themselves spiritedly with movies. Today, it's The Sound of Music. I love that show! I took this quiz on FB that everyone was linking to "Which Broadway Musical Best Describes Your Life?" I wish I had gotten The Sound of Music. Instead, I got Wicked. Not sure what that's supposed to mean. Does that make me Galinda or Elpheba? Not quite sure I want to know the answer to that.

~4~

So apparently by some people's standards, four stars just isn't good enough. It's got to be 5 stars or nothing. I read Jennifer's book and reviewed it here. I don't normally do Amazon reviews but I thought it would be fine to take part of my post and put it over there as a review. It's been deleted now, but there was a comment left by some guy who thought I ranked it 4 stars in an attempt to get my review read over everyone else's. (Why would anyone even do that? I can't even conceive of why someone would want their review read over others. Do people get paid to be reviewers now?)

Maybe I do over think the whole star thing. In my mind, 4 stars is still a compliment. I liked it! That's what it means. I reserve "I loved it" for things that my whole family enjoys or things that I'm going to re-read over and over and over for years to come. Classics, you know? A memoir just doesn't fall into that category for me no matter how well written or thought provoking it is. Because it's someone's story and once you know the story, you know the story. If people nowadays think that it better be 5 stars or nothing, then they really are missing the point that some skeptical people (like myself) won't have an easy time believing all those 5 star reviews unless there are some 3's and 4's thrown in here and there. Nothing but 5 stars can feel like an echo chamber, not a consensus. So, don't hate on the 4 star-ers. Maybe some of us just have trust issues and have trouble saying "I love you man"!

~5~

SOOOO… Kendra has been talking smack about all of us ancient bloggers who chose cutesy nicknames for our kids all those many, many moons ago when we first started blogging! Seriously though, I can kind of see her point. I wrote this comment in response to one of her other reader's thoughts:

When I first started blogging in 2007 (back when dinosaurs roamed the Internet) we didn't know who would come find us and try to stalk/steal/murder our children. I admit feeling awkward about using the nicknames now but then I read that employers are using every kind of social media to do research on potential employees and I really don't want my son's future employer to google his name and find out all about his issues with potty training and Algebra II (not in the same year, obvi).

Nowadays, as my husband likes to point out, the safest place to hide a tree is in a forest, but back then… we were still building this virtual forest. Maybe these young whipper snappers need to take some time to think about what life was like back when Google image search was only as old as Pinterest is now, Pinterest didn't exist and Facebook was a babe in Zuckerberg's arms.

Now, I admit, the nicknames that I've been using for my kids on my blog for the last 7+ years haven't aged perfectly with them but they still say they don't mind them. Even the 16 year old. I've thought about changing them. I've thought about using their given names. But then the whole privacy issue/future employer thing comes up and I chicken out. I'll think about that tomorrow! (If you read that like Scarlett O'Hara in your head, we can be best friends!)

EDITED TO ADD: Btw... if it's not obvious, I'm just teasing Kendra. I think this subject has been brought up by many people, hers was just the most recent iteration. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and should do what they feel comfortable doing. There is no right or wrong here.

~6~

These are getting progressively less quick. I've already spent too much time on the computer today so I'm just going to leave you with this last one...

Salutations!

Who is Waltzing Matilda?

Waltzing Matilda Makes...

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